Best Friends Forever (23 page)

She crossed her arms over her chest, looking sul en. “Dan wil either turn up, or he won’t.”

“And then what? What about your job?”

“They’re not expecting me back until Tuesday, and it’s not a big deal if I take off for a few days,” she said. “hey probably just think I went to get a boob job or something.”

“You don’t need to tel them in advance?”

She shook her head in sorrow at the extent of my naïveté. “Addie. If you tel them in advance, then it leaks. Then al the bloggers publish before-and-after pictures of you, and every-body knows.”

“But if you get plastic surgery, aren’t people supposed to notice that you look different?

Isn’t people noticing kind of the point?”

She rol ed her eyes. “You just say you got some sun.”

“Fantastic. Look, just drop me off at TD Bank, and I’l get us al the money we need.”

Of course, it wasn’t as easy as that. The bank was packed and overheated, and I had to wait by the automated change-counter for a spot at the back of the line. Fil ing out the withdrawal slip, trying to guess just how much cash we’d need to finance an unspecified length of time at an undisclosed location, I told myself it was unlikely that Jordan Novick had already faxed my name and photograph to every bank in the chain. He was thinking of me only as the relative of a potential suspect, if he was thinking of me at al .

He’d been nice, though, I thought as I joined the throng of upstanding citizens. It figured that the first nice, non-crazy guy I’d meet would be investigating a crime, a crime in which I was now implicated. Even if Dan Swansea did turn up and clear Val’s good name, Jordan probably wouldn’t be interested in me. “I’d like to make a withdrawal, please,” I said when the tel er beckoned me forward, and I slid my slip and driver’s license across the counter. An instant later, Valerie, with the fringed scarf wrapped burka-style over her head and most of her face, sidled up beside me and snatched the withdrawal slip back.

“This is a robbery,” she told the tel er. said to the tel er. She had a round face and red lipstick and a felt and fake-fur Santa hat on her head. She looked from my face to Val’s and back again. “I’ve got a gun,” Val whispered. “Give me whatever’s in the drawer.” She pul ed a plastic shopping bag out of her purse and held it open in front of the tel er’s startled face. “Put it in here. Nobody moves, nobody gets hurt. Come with me if you want to live.” And then, apparently having run out of movie lines to quote, she waved the empty bag for emphasis.

“Ignore her,” I said to the tel er, whose name tag read TIARA. I tried to give her my license and the withdrawal slip again. Val clamped her hand down over mine.

“We need ten Gs in unmarked,

nonsequential bil s,” she said through lips that barely moved. “No dye packets. No alarms. Be cool, sister, and we’l al make it out of here just fine.”

Tiara final y opened her mouth, revealing a wad of grape-scented gum the size of a golf bal and a silver stud through the meat of her tongue. “Ohmygod.”

“Ignore her,” I repeated. “She doesn’t have a gun.”

“Do so.” Val reached into her purse and pul ed out a slim rectangle of what looked like sterling silver. “Now get busy livin’ or get busy dyin’.”

“Valerie,” I said. “That’s a tampon case.”

“Yeah, wel . I’ve got a gun. It’s in here. Somewhere.” Val unloaded mints and makeup and leather luggage tags onto the narrow granite ledge of the counter. Meanwhile, Tiara had unlocked her drawer and was sliding banded stacks of money at me. I was pushing them back at her as Val pul ed something out of her handbag.

“Here!”

“That’s an eyelash curler.”

“This?”

“iPod.”

“Listen.” Tiara was whispering to us. “Just leave two stacks of fifties in the green Saturn parked in the corner out back, and we’re al good. I won’t pul the alarm until you leave.”

Val’s eyes lit up. “Seriously?” she asked in her normal news-castery voice. “You are so cool!”

“Jesus,” I said. “Listen. Tiara. We aren’t doing this. We’re not…”

“Here you go,” said Tiara. She’d gone pale, but her hands were working smoothly. Packets of bil s tumbled into the bag. I looked around to see if anyone in the bustling bank was noticing the robbery in progress. It didn’t look that way. At the station next to me, a smal , bald man was arguing with the tel er about when his out-ofstate check would clear, and there was a commotion over by the change-counter that seemed to have resulted from someone’s purse-dog pooping on the floor.

“That’s ten thousand dol ars,” said Tiara.

“You’re gonna take care of me, right?” With one long pink-glossed acrylic nail she pointed at a picture she had Scotch-taped to the side of her computer. A little boy in corduroys was sitting on Santa’s knee.

“That’s my baby.”

“We got you,” Val promised. She looped the bag’s handles around her wrists.

“Thanks.”

I waited until Val was out the door, then took my withdrawal slip back, crossed out the $2,000 I’d planned on taking out, and wrote in $10,000. “Just take it out of my account, okay?”

I said to Tiara, who nodded, continuing to work at her gum, as placid as if she got robbed every day of the week. “As long as you take care of me,” she said, and I nodded—what choice did I have?

“Merry Christmas!” she cal ed, and I wished her the same.

Out in the parking lot behind the bank, we found Tiara’s Saturn. The doors were locked, but the passenger’s-side window was open wide enough for us to slip two of the wrapped money packets through. “Ho ho ho,” said Val. She stared at the bank’s backside for a minute.

“Wow. She was cool.”

“Okay,

just

for

the

record?

You

are

insane.

And we need to get out of here.”

“You don’t want to rob the McDonald’s?”

I thought about it. Strange as it seemed, part of me actual y did. “We should go,” I said again.

“How about you drive for a while?” she said, and tossed me the keys.

TWENTY-EIGHT

He was in heaven. That explained

everything. On his way along the road, he’d

been hit by a car, and he’d died, or maybe

he’d frozen to death on the road

somewhere, and now he was in heaven, and

heaven was a white bed with a white lace

canopy on top and a cross made of

scal oped white wood nailed to the wal

above it, across from a doily-topped dresser

covered with painted plaster dol s in

elaborate gowns, the kinds of things he

thought lonely women who lived alone with

their cats bought late at night on QVC. “A

new…day…has…come,” a sweet soprano

sang. In heaven, thought Dan, Céline Dion

provided the sound track.

He sat up, groaning at the tsunami of pain

that rol ed through his head, as a woman

came into the room. She carried a tray in

her hands—there was a steaming mug of

something, a bowl of what smel ed like

oatmeal, a smal glass of orange juice so

bright it looked almost psychedelic, and a

larger glass of milk.

“You’re awake, she said as Dan hastily

rearranged the blankets over his morning

erection. He wasn’t sure if the woman in the

pink velour bathrobe was an angel—she

looked kind of grumpy and also kind of

familiar—but he wasn’t taking any chances

or risking causing any offense.

“Here,” she said, and set the tray on his

lap. Not gently, either. Hot tea slopped over

the edge of the mug and trickled through

the blankets. Dan looked at her, real y

looked at her, and the pieces fel into place.

“Holy Mary?” he blurted. That wasn’t real y

her name. Her real name was Meredith

Armbruster, but to Dan and his friends,

she’d been Holy Mary, who’d joined that

weird culty church that convened in a

renovated gas station in Pleasant Ridge’s

crummiest neighborhood; Holy Mary, who’d

gotten herself excused from gym class (her

faith forbade her from letting the other girls

see her underpants) and biology class (no

evolution) and health class (no fornication).

They’d cal ed her Holy Mary, and Carrie,

after the girl from the movie who’d gotten

doused in pigs’ blood and then burned down

the prom.

She blinked, then frowned. “Take your

aspirin,” she said. “Drink your milk.”

Dan lifted the cup. “What happened?” He

could remember how she’d found him on the

side of the road and driven him to her

house. She’d helped him into the bathroom,

out of his trash bags, and then, when he

was naked and shivering before her,

dabbed the blood away from the wound on

the side of his head. Then she’d shooed him

into the shower and washed him, head to

toe, kneeling to soap and rinse his feet as

he huddled, shivering and sick and aching

and stil , he realized, very very drunk,

against the pink-tiled wal s.

“What happened?” he asked again,

hearing the silence that surrounded them,

guessing that the rest of the house was

empty, that this was Merry’s parents’ house

and that he was in what had been her high

school bedroom. Where other girls might

have had posters or pictures, she had that

cross, draped with a set of rosary beads.

Tucked into the edge of the mirror, where

other girls might have kept a picture of their

boyfriend or their best friend, was a mass

card. Jesus had his hands clasped in prayer

and his eyes tilted toward the heavens.

“What happened,” said Merry, “is between

you and Our Father.” She clasped her

hands and looked heavenward, just like

Jesus on her mirror.

“Last night,” Dan said. “You found me…”

“You were walking along the road. You

were wearing garbage bags. I helped you

—that was just Christian charity; any decent

person would have done the same thing. I

brought you back here. I cleaned you up

and I let you sleep.”

Dan gave a dry and rueful chuckle. “I

guess I was pretty wasted.”

Merry pursed her lips. “‘ Do not gaze at

wine when it is red, when it sparkles in the

cup, when it goes down smoothly. In the

end, it bites like a snake and poisons like a

viper.’”

He nodded, grimacing as his stomach

roiled and the world wobbled in front of him.

“True that.”

She closed her mouth, looking at him

sternly. “You ruined those girls’ lives,” she

said after a moment.

Dan put the cup down. “What are you

talking about?”

“Valerie and Adelaide.”

“I didn’t…” The words echoed in his head,

rol ing around like bowling bal s on a dance

floor.

“‘And the devil that deceived them was

cast into the lake of fire and brimstone,

where the beast and the false prophet are,

and shal be tormented day and night for

ever and ever.’”

Dan shook his head, which made it ache

even worse. He hadn’t done anything wrong.

He and Val had been kids, fooling around.

Val had cried afterward—he’d remembered

that—but that was because it had been her

first time. At least that was what he’d

thought, what he’d told himself for years,

and when Addie had accused him, Val had

said no. She’d backed him up. She’d sat with

him at lunch for the rest of the year, for

Chrissake, and was that the behavior of a

girl who’d been harmed, who’d been

violated? No. No, it was not.

Except, Dan thought as Merry continued

to look at him. If that was true, why had Val

been so angry at the reunion? You ruined my life, she’d hissed at him, her pretty face contorted. Dan lifted one hand to his head

and rubbed at the sore spot there that felt

disturbingly mushy, like a bruise on an

apple.

“Repent,” said Holy Mary. Her face was

flushed, her eyes were alight. She fel to her

knees beside the bed with a wal -rattling

thump. “Repent,” she said, and reached for

his hands and gripped them, pul ing him out

from under the covers (he was indeed

naked, he saw) and onto his knees. Milk

and juice and tea sloshed over the edges of

their cups and soaked the quilt. Dan

Swansea knelt next to Holy Mary and

squeezed his eyes shut.

TWENTY-NINE

Back at the station, Jordan’s patrol-people were hunched over their desks, fingers clattering over the keyboards, telephones tucked under their ears. They’d made progress, he learned as he hung up his coat and went to his office, with the three of them in their blue uniforms (Hol y, he was sure, had hers special y tailored to make the most of her admirable ass) fol owing him like something out of Make Way for Ducklings, which the Nighty-Night Lady had read two nights before. Of the one hundred and eighty-seven registered attendees and thirteen walk-ins at the previous night’s reunion, ninety-six of them were men, either members of the class or spouses of women who were. Of those ninety-six, eighty-four had been accounted for—they’d answered their home phones, or their cel phones, or the phones at their parents’ houses to say that they were fine and wel and were not missing their belts or a significant amount of blood.

That left an even dozen. Of those, Christie Keogh, reached at her home, postworkout, pre-pedicure, told him that eight were out-of-towners, most likely on Saturday-morning flights taking them back to California and Connecticut and an army base in Stuttgart, Germany.

Which brought them to four.

Jordan stood in front of his desk as Hol y Muñoz fumbled with a folder. “Oops!” she cried as a folder of paper-clipped pages slipped between her fingers. Jordan crouched down, plucked the pages out of the air before they hit the ground, and handed them to Hol y.

“Wow,” she said, taking pains to make sure that their fingers touched as she took the folder. “Fast.” If this kept up, Jordan thought, she’d show up at work one morning with I LOVE

YOU written on her eyelids, like that girl in the Indiana Jones movies. She was adorable, but she was also significantly younger than he was, and his subordinate. She deserved someone better, someone who hadn’t already fucked up a marriage and did not have a fantasy life starring an icon of the non-potty-trained.

He sat as Hol y read the list. “Scott Erhlich. Lives in Chicago. Unmarried, no kids, not answering his home or his cel phone. Eric Ramos. Lives in Cincinnati, married to Kel y Granvil e—she’s the Pleasant Ridge grad. They’ve got three kids. No answer at home, and neither one of them has a cel phone. We’re in the process of trying to reach the wife’s family. We figure they might have gone there after the reunion. Kevin Oliphant…”

Jordan interrupted, remembering what Jon had said: Kevin Elephant. “Wait. Who was that last one?”

Hol y repeated the name, then spel ed it.

“He lives in Pleasant Ridge.”

“He got a record?” Jordan asked.

Hol y flipped a page. “DUI times three, drunk and disorderly, disturbing the peace. Bar fights, it looks like, and one assault. Looks like he pushed his ex-wife down a flight of stairs, after she al eged that he’d hit her son with…” She paused, peering at the notebook. “A cast-iron frying pan?”

“My mother had one. You use them to fry chicken,” said said Gary.

“Or bake cornbread,” offered Devin Freedman. “They’re heavy.”

“They sel them at Wil iams-Sonoma,”

Gary said.

“I know what they are,” Hol y said. “I just can’t see someone using one as a weapon.”

Jordan pressed his hand against his forehead. “Who’s number four?”

“Daniel Swansea,” said Hol y. “He’s not answering his cel or his home number. Single guy, lives downtown in a high-rise. His parents say he doesn’t real y keep in touch. Day doorman hasn’t seen him; we left messages for the night guy. He works at a Toyota dealership, but nobody there was expecting him until Sunday.”

Jordan wrote the names down, then studied them. “Daniel Swansea,” he muttered, and flipped through his notebook to confirm that Jon had mentioned that name, too. “Field trip.” He pointed to Hol y.

“You take the first guy, Scott Ehrlich.” He pointed to Gary. “You find Daniel Swansea. Go to his place, and if he’s not there yet, talk to the neighbors and the people at the dealership.